I was a little worried about dinner tonight. First of all, I didn’t get back into town today until Gus was already at riding lessons and I had no groceries. So there we were at the grocery store with no naps, no snack, and late to start dinner. I let the kids buy those ridiculous frosted sugar cookies that look like they are made with an entire gallon of food coloring and lard. And I forgot to buy chicken. I went back in the grocery store only to find that they didn’t have your basic cut up chicken. It was either a family pack for 20 or a 10 pack of chicken thighs. I almost quit right then and ordered pizza.

I am so glad that I powered through. This chicken and vegetable recipe was absolutely delicious. The flavors were perfect – not too spicy for the kids, but still well-seasoned – and the cooking time was just right. The kids ate more chicken than I have seen in a long time, plus seconds of potatoes. They weren’t all that keen on the butternut squash, but I thought it was excellent.

I did modify the recipe a bit. Obviously, with no available appropriate chicken pieces, I had to improvise. I used a double pack of boneless, skinless chicken breasts instead of the bone-in, skin-on chicken pieces. This resulted in a lot less chicken (probably a little over a pound instead of the called for three pounds). I also used a fresh butternut squash and less than one pound of potatoes. I’ll tell you something. This recipe says that it feeds four. I realize that three pounds of bone-in chicken is not the same as one pound of boneless, but I can’t for the life of me see how this feeds four people. It was so much food! There is no way that all that food fit on one baking sheet as shown in the picture. I could barely fit mine onto one sheet with fewer pieces of chicken and less vegetables. There are definitely some vegetables missing in that original shot.

Ok, back the adjustments. Given that I had less chicken (sort-of) and less veggies, I halved the spice mixture. I did not halve the olive oil because I didn’t have skin on my chicken and thought it needed the extra fat. This was a good choice as it resulted in very juicy chicken. Covering less meat with more seasoning produced good, balanced flavor all around. I would definitely recommend upping the seasoning mix if you are baking the whole chicken as instructed. I did follow the recipe’s oven temperature and cooking time. Both were perfect. The chicken got good and brown, and the vegetables were perfectly tender with a nice crust.

One last bonus? This recipe took less than 45 minutes from start to finish. Perfect for a week night. Please try this one. It was an excellent balance of flavor and simplicity. Williams-Sonoma hitting it out of the park once again...

I’ll be hiding out in this secret garden today if anyone needs me... #wishthiswasmyyard

School picture day. And it finally feels like fall in #houston

Today is #dayofthegirl , a day created by the UN to celebrate the strength of girls and acknowledge the barriers girls face in all over the world. Yesterday in our #girlscout meeting, we made pins to wear today and we worked thru the @wagggs_world curriculum around International Day of the Girl and gender equality. I can best sum up the girls’ discussion by quoting one of the girls: “Mind blown.” (Imagine this with full 8yo drama quotient and hand motions. It was rich.) 👧🏾👧🏼👧🏽👧🏿👧🏻 I wrote a big, long caption about the importance of this day in a global context but the fact of the matter is that my 8yo daughter, who proudly wore a pin last night to dinner (swipe left), won’t wear her pin to school today because she thinks the boys will make fun of her. “They expect me to like certain things and act a certain way, Mom.” Full stop. 👧🏽👧🏻👧🏾👧🏿👧🏼 I’m angry. And I’m incredibly sad. And I’m sharing that here because real life. 👧🏻👧🏽👧🏿👧🏼👧🏾 I get that kids will be kids and the boys in question certainly don’t have an intent to exclude girls simply because they are girls. Or if they do have that intent it’s because both genders think the other stinks at this age. I get that my daughter’s insecurities are her own, her assumptions about what may happen are her own, and I’m sure I’ve contributed to both by being a loud mouth feminist. But y’all. Our kids - our daughters and our sons - deserve better than this. They deserve better than to continue to live within the confines of worn out stereotypes of gender roles. I’m open to ideas. How are we going to change this? #bethechange

I don’t typically celebrate “wins”. To be clear, it’s not that I object to public acknowledgment of success, just that it’s more my nature to move on to the next thing once (if ever) something is complete. It’s also possible that my idea of a win has always been substantially larger than getting dinner on the table. Hence the parenthetical in the previous sentence. 🌮🥟🥞 Today, however, I want to acknowledge some wins and I want to do so publicly so that those of you reading this who are like me, who have what others call “high expectations” (virgos and type As anyone?), and who beat yourselves up over the incomplete items on the list instead of noticing the things that you actually did (and that probably weren’t even on the list to begin with) - YES ! I'm talking to you! You might possibly recognize yourself. (Also that was certainly a run-on sentence. Let’s move on.) 🏅🏆🎖 Today, I said yes to yoga with a fellow mom who I don’t know well, which was uncomfortable on more than one front. And it turned out to be amazing. Health and well-being win. 🧘🏻‍♀️🧘🏻‍♀️🧘🏻‍♀️ Today, I intended to join in with One Room Challenge for the 5th time. I sat down and wrote a blog post about why I was participating only to find in the writing that I no longer felt the need to participate. So I didn’t. And on top of that, I didn’t feel that the time writing was time wasted. Down with busy for the sake of busy win. 🏡🏡🏡 Today, my son lost his campaign for representative of his third grade classroom. He came home in tears. But we talked, and he went from never trying anything new again to never trying things with voting to maybe trying things with voting in a couple of years. He ended the day in smiles. I’m not going to lie. There may have been an ice cream sandwich involved. Parenting win. ✅✅✅ Today, I got real dinner on the table, with vegetables and everything, for the third day in a row, despite soccer and music lessons and whatever else. And my kids ate it. And we talked while we ate dinner. Normal, right? I’m going with a win. 🥗🍝🍪 So there it is. The little things have big impact. Tell me, if you’ve made it this far, what was your win today? #ryhsyinnercircle

Thirteen years married to this guy today. Pretty damn lucky. #adventureisoutthere